


Slipping Through The Cracks

by KeyWolf25888



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boy-Who-Lived Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25592275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeyWolf25888/pseuds/KeyWolf25888
Summary: As penance for his part in the war against Voldemort, Draco is sent away to live among the muggles. None of them interest him - except for the mysterious boy who lives with his neighbours.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 19
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly starting this fic has been slightly surreal, because I've been reading drarry fics for about ten years? But this is the first time I've tried writing it myself, and it's been very fun and strange.
> 
> I'd also like to give the caveat that my writing harry potter fanfic does not mean I endorse jkr and her transphobia, or the other (many) problems with the series, and if you do then you can stop reading my fic right now :)

Draco stared at the number plate on the house in front of him. “You’re sure about this?” He asked.

“I’m sure,” Dumbledore said gently. “It won’t be forever.”

Draco resisted the urge to point out that the problem was that it was happening at all. The cheerful ‘no. 2’ stared at him like it was mocking him in its muggleness, like it was going out of its way to point out that Draco didn’t belong here. “I know,” he said instead.

“Do you have the keys?”

Draco patted the coat pocket where he was sure he had put them. “Yep.”

He turned around. Dumbledore was still stood there. He sort of looked expectant, like he expected Draco to invite him in to look around.

Unfortunately for him, Draco couldn’t imagine anything worse than inviting his teacher into his prison for the next few years. There was absolutely no reason to do it, and Draco wasn’t going to give in. He held very few cards in this game anymore, but he was damned if he was going to give up the very few that he did hold.

“Thank you,” Draco said, hoping that Dumbledore would get the hint.

“I’ll see you in three months for your check up,” Dumbledore said, taking one step back. “Don’t forget to keep out of trouble.”

As if Draco would risk getting into ‘trouble’ again. He had to keep every urge to bristle to a minimum – Dumbledore probably wouldn’t see him in front of the wizenagamot, but there was no telling what they might do to him if they decided that they needed to review Dumbledore’s memories of this. “Thanks,” Draco repeated, trying to keep frustration out of his voice and face.

This time, Dumbledore turned and walked away, down the rest of the street. Right. They were in a muggle neighbourhood. He couldn’t just apparate away. And that meant that Draco couldn’t apparate away either.

His hand brushed over where his wand would be if he still had it. The line of his coat felt wrong without it, but he knew full well that it was currently sealed away in some part of the ministry building, wherever they usually put prisoner’s wands. Draco had very little hope that he would get it back when he was released from this sentence, but it was nice to imagine that he might one day get to go back to being normal.

Then a dog started barking somewhere, and Draco was brought out of his musings. Right, he was meant to be going into his new house. There were probably all manner of muggles watching him right now as he struggled.

Draco swallowed, and brought out the hefty set of keys. He didn’t know what half of them were meant for, but what he did know was that the big silver one was meant for the front door of the house – the one in front of him.

Putting it in the door, he turned it – and the door unlocked. It seemed strange, to open a house like this and feel no trace of magic around it. The whole point of this was that he should have no access to magic for the remainder of his sentence, and he had to get used to that.

He opened the door. The first thing that he saw was a hallway, painted a pale magnolia colour. It was ugly as hell, and there were generic framed pictures of flowers hung on the walls. Had the last owner been a middle aged woman? It definitely seemed that way.

The one piece of normality were the two trunks tucked against the wall just inside the door. He recognised them immediately – of course he did, they both bore the Malfoy crest proudly on the lids – and knew that everything he was being allowed to have was tucked away inside them. If he had had the chance to pack them himself he would have known what was actually inside them, but as it was he had to make do with knowing that his mum had had a hand in packing.

Ignoring them for now, Draco shut the front door behind him. Immediately the room became a little darker, and Draco instinctively went for his wand.

It wasn’t there.

How did muggles light up their rooms again? Draco knew they must have a way, but he had never paid any attention to the muggleborns at Hogwarts, and his father would have had a fit if he had ever suggested taking muggle studies.

Maybe that could wait for now. Draco walked down the short corridor. At the end of it was what he supposed was meant to be a kitchen, small and without any house elves.

(It was at this moment that Draco realised he was going to have to cook all his own meals. How had he not realised this in all the time he had known this happening that that would be the case?)

There were a million colours here, everything boxy and square. There were so many buttons that Draco was sure he would never remember what they all did. He swallowed, clenching his hands into fists and back out again.

The kitchen could wait. It could wait for as long as it took for Draco to get hungry, as far as he was concerned. Turning to the left, he walked through a room with a table in it – clearly supposed to be a dining room of some kind, although it was much smaller than the dining hall at the manor – and then into a room with three soft looking chairs arranged around one of those muggle boxes that played them pictures. Draco had never quite been able to understand the muggle fascination with moving pictures – they weren’t actually that impressive.

Going out of the door to the left led him in a full circle, back to the hallway and the front door where he had first come in.

This time, he took the plunge and began to climb the stairs.

He couldn’t even apparate out and into the upstairs. He had to climb them, like a muggle.

Draco’s whole being shuddered with every step.

Upstairs, the house seemed even smaller. There were four rooms up there – three bedrooms, and one bathroom. All of the rooms were small, and Draco wanted nothing to do with any of them.

The least concession that Draco could give them was that the house was fully furnished, just like the Wizenagamot had promised it would be. Draco was genuinely surprised by this – he had been expecting to get the bare minimum of a few chairs downstairs, and a mattress at least, but not much more.

 _You surely have enough comforts in your manor, Mr Malfoy. Surely you have no need for bringing your own things with you. We can provide you with…. Things. I am sure that they will be satisfactory to you_.

When Draco had been told that to begin with, he had assumed that this meant that they assumed he had grown up in luxury, and needed the best of everything all the time. Which, was true, but only because the things that Draco had were superior to anything that they had. Certainly superior to anything that the muggles had.

Everything here was… definitely of the muggle standard. Draco didn’t know who had purchased it, but it looked like they hadn’t put much effort into it.

The one bedroom upstairs that actually had a bed in it was clearly meant to be Draco’s. It was the biggest room, to be sure, but that wasn’t saying much. It wasn’t even as big as the boy’s dorm at Hogwarts, and Draco had always thought that that one was too small. The only reason that Draco put up with that was because he knew that it was traditional. His father had used this dorm, his grandfather had used this dorm, and so it was okay to be in it. So long as he could bring as many home comforts as he could.

Carefully, worried that it might be dirty somehow, Draco sat down gently on the bed. Immediately, he felt a spring digging into his buttocks. He grimaced. Was this the level of comfort he was to expect for the next few years?

Instinctively he went for his wand, to transfigure his bed into one which would be better to sleep on.

But he had no wand. He couldn’t change his mattress at all. And he realised, with sudden clarity, that if he complained about the mattress, he would only be accused of being spoiled again. It would only make him seem like someone who needed all of the fancy things, all of the time.

Draco could give up all of his luxuries. He could. But this? He picked at a loose thread on the mattress. It was very clearly not a new mattress. It was barely usable.

He bounced a little on the mattress. It squeaked. Draco groaned a little, and stood up. Tried to put the bed out of his mind.

There was little to look at in the rest of the room. One dresser stood on the other wall, made of a light wood that Draco didn’t recognise. As he walked closer to it, he began to see how it was scratched up. Not too much, but enough that he could see the dents in the top, and the rounding out of the corners that spoke to it being brushed against many times.

Just like the bed, this was clearly a second hand dresser.

Draco had never owned a second hand object in his life, and so far he didn’t like much of it.

He pulled out a drawer. Thankfully, it was empty – there was no trace in any of the drawers of his things.

Turning and walking out of the room, he jogged down the stairs. His trunks were still at the bottom, and he picked up the first one. And – he staggered. His trunk was heavier than he remembered it being, and his arms strained a little as he hefted it to a point resting against his chest where it felt balanced.

Carefully, he walked back up to his room. It felt sort of good to get some of his normal, good quality things in the house, like he was making his mark on the place. The muggle house couldn’t be made entirely good, of course, but it could be improved on by the kinds of touches that Draco could make to it.

He placed the first trunk right beside the dresser. He had no intention of putting any of his clothes in it, of course – he’d rather live out of his trunks for the next few years than have his belongings touch that old thing.

Then he went back down and repeated the process, bringing the second trunk up and placing it next to the other one.

For some reason, having the trunks in the room only made the room seem smaller and more lonely. There was less space to move in, and it reminded Draco that he was going to be trapped here for the foreseeable future.

Deciding that he’d wallow over that particular injustice later, he headed back downstairs. This time, as he walked through to the living room, he noticed something that he hadn’t on the way there. A big… folder? Sat on the coffee table in the middle of the room. There were no labels on it, nothing to tell Draco what it was there for.

The only reason he knew it was a folder was because of mudbloods like Granger, bringing their muggle devices into Hogwarts like they were equal to wizarding devices. It didn’t even look good – bright red, like it would entice Draco into reading it.

He sat down on one of the sofas. He sank right into it – clearly it was also second hand, something they must have found for him at the cheapest price possible. but at least it was comfortable, unlike his bed.

Reaching out, he gingerly picked up the folder. It was heavier than he had expected, and he had to lift it with both hands in order to actually get the damn thing onto his lap.

Opening it, he stared at the first page. Not only was the type of parchment muggles used incredibly white and flimsy, but it also smelled weird. It was the first thing Draco noticed, that it was so different to the parchment that he was used to using.

The second thing that Draco noticed was the words written down on this first page.

‘A guide to muggle life’

Like it had burned him, Draco dropped the folder on the floor. It fell face down, and Draco was sure that some of the pages were being crumpled under its own weight. That didn’t matter, though, not when he was being insulted like this. As if Draco would ever have any interest in learning about muggles and whatever filth they got up to in their own time. Draco would be dead before he ever agreed to assimilate to muggle culture.

No, he wouldn’t need to think about that. The muggles would just have to deal with the very normal and rational way that Draco was going to live his life here.

For what was probably half an hour, Draco sat on his new sofa and contemplated his life. At least three times during that time he went for his wand. Clearly his mind still hadnt figured out that there was no chance of him using any magic for a long while unless he wanted to get locked up for real this time.

The light got lower and lower as Draco sat there. The large window that looked out onto the street showed the light slowly getting darker and darker, and Draco watched it lightly, without thinking too hard about it.

And then his stomach growled, and Draco jerked back to himself.

What was he going to do for food?

Draco realised that he hadn’t eaten since he left the headquarters – hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Briefly, he considered just not eating. It would be worth it, for not having to eat muggle food today.

But as his stomach began to insist that no, he was hungry, he realised that that wouldn’t be an option. He needed to eat.

Swallowing hard, he stood up and walked through to the kitchen. He hadn’t thought to check the levels of food in there earlier – was there even any food in it? Draco found himself suddenly terrified that he might need to brave a muggle supermarket tonight.

Where would muggles even keep their food? Draco eyed the various cupboards and boxes in front of him. there was nothing there to suggest that there was food in any of them, and there were so very many of them. (Draco wasn’t even entirely sure what the kitchen at the manor looked like, never mind figuring out this new one.)

Gingerly he tried opening the one that looked like a big black box with a glass door.

There were several metal racks inside, but no food of any kind.

Shit. Swallowing again, mouth beginning to feel dry, Draco found himself glad that he had no audience for this. He turned to the cupboard next to the box. Maybe this one would be fruitful?

He opened it. Inside was a wall of metal, just a whole bunch of pots and pans stacked on top of each other in a mass that looked ripe to fall out and on him. Quickly, he shut it again. Qith each failure he was getting more and more hungry, and it only made him want to get that food more.

Then Draco pulled open a drawer next to that cupboard, and hit the jackpot. Inside was so much muggle food. Just – so much of that plastic material that muggles tended to use for absolutely everything and anything that they could.

Draco touched the corner of one of the squares. Packets. It rustled and crinkled at him, and Draco tried to not be disgusted by the whole thing. How did muggles look at this stuff and think, yum, time for food?

But he was hungry enough that he knew he had to try it. There was no time to sit and cook a three course meal, as much as he might have wanted to do so. There was only the need for food right now.

And so Draco picked up several of the packets, and brought them over to the dining table. If he was going to eat these, he was at least going to eat them at the dining table, like a civilised person.

Already his fingers felt greasy, just from holding onto the plastic. Was that normal? Just a plastic thing? Or was it because it was food? Draco didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He sat down in a dining room chair. It wasn’t exactly comfortable – it felt hard, like it had been used too much and been flattened.

Focussing more on the food than on his chair, Draco gingerly pulled open one of the packets. Oh – this one was chocolate. Draco didn’t recognise the branding, but he recognised what chocolate was. Eating some of it, he was happy to find that it was familiar and tasted good. As usual with chocolate, it helped to calm him down – to make him feel better about all this. Tension and stress that Draco didn’t even know he had been carrying flowed out of him, and it made it almost easier to deal with.

Chewing on the chocolate, Draco began to wonder what he had ever been worried about to begin with. He couldn’t eat like this every night, but for now it would do. For now it would fill his belly.

But when he finished the chocolate bar, he put the wrapper to the side, and looked at the other packet on the table. It was coloured brighter, and was much larger.

Draco cracked it open. The artificial scent hit him immediately – it was very clear that this was not something he had eaten before.

This seemed to be the packet which was the one that the grease was coming from. Gingerly, Draco took out one of the thin things inside, and took a bite. It – crunched.

He wrinkled his nose as the flavour from it coated his tongue. It wasn’t all that pleasant – too fake, too strong for Draco to like it. Pushing the rest of the packet away, Draco decided that he couldn’t possibly eat any more of it, not today.

But he was still hungry, and the only thing he’d eaten was the chocolate. He couldn’t possibly be full just from that, he needed something more to fill him up properly.

And so he headed back through to the kitchen, trying to keep the ever-present irritation from spilling out from him. This was just his life now, and he would have to deal with it whether he liked it or not. (Only years of controlling his emotions at home kept him calm right now.)

There were still – Draco counted them – five cupboards to look through, plus a big white rectangle, which Draco couldn’t help but feel looked like it was one small push away from falling over on top of him. It certainly didn’t look like something that one would store their food inside.

If nothing else, Draco did want to find out what the muggles possibly put inside it. He opened the door, and immediately was hit with a blast of cold air, as well as a light which the box emitted as soon as he opened it. Draco’s jaw dropped – what magic had this box been infused with that it could do this? Be cold all the time?

Inside there was all manner of foods – some of which Draco recognised, and others which he didn’t. That was okay – Draco wasn’t picky about his food. Well, he was, but so long as whoever had stocked the thing with decent food, he should be fine.

Well, Draco certainly hadn’t been told about any magic being used in the house, but he wasn’t going to complain about anything like this. There was no way muggles could possibly know about how to keep things cold for a long time, not without cooling charms and a lot of magic. He’d have to keep this hidden from any muggles.

Then he laughed, out loud, the first time he’d laughed in the entire time he’d been here. What muggles were going to see this? It wasn’t like he was going to be talking to any of them, so he didn’t have to worry about anything like that. no, the muggles would be safe from his cold box.

He would need to find something in here to eat. he picked up various packages, and put them back down, rummaging as he never would at home for something to eat. It was odd, he thought – he never really had much choice in what he ate. At home he simply ate what the house elves brought him – not hard to do, since his parents had brought him up eating proper food, and there was nothing to dislike about it. And then at Hogwarts it was mostly much of the same, with a small amount more of variation. Sure, there would be a variety of dishes served at dinner, but he would still be limited to what was served that night. And there was nothing worse than telling your guest that their food wasn’t good enough, and that it should be made up differently. Draco had better manners than that.

But he was going to be buying his own food. That had been one of the things made very clear to him when they told him that he was going to be forced to live by himself in a muggle neighbourhood – that they wouldn’t be providing anything to him in the time he was there, and that there would be no interaction between them at all, unless he broke one of the rules.

Of course, the act of buying the food would be entirely beneath Draco. There was no mistaking that. but to have the freedom to choose all his own meals…

Draco stared at a pack of sausages in his hand. He could eat all of these by himself if he wanted. There was nobody to stop him. nobody but him would know he had even done it. There would be no repercussions.

Slowly, he pulled them out of the fridge. Richmond sausages. They were slightly cold, a part of the charm inside the cold box, he thought.

Now – how did one go about cooking sausages?

Draco stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to think if he had ever seen anyone cook sausages. It must be possible to do with what he had. There had been that whole cupboard full of… cooking things, after all.

After Draco had located something which reasonably looked like it could cook a sausage or two, he ran up against another problem.

How, in the name of merlin’s beard, did one work a muggle cooking device?

Draco found himself resisting, so many times, the urge to reach for his wand. If only he could use a cooking charm, or even just summon some fire, then he could cook the sausages in any way he wanted.

But he couldn’t do that, and so he had to come up with another way.

With the only possible option for the cooking device being the black circles on top of where the strange glass cupboard was, Draco hesitated before doing anything with it. There were four bits of metal to one side of it, which Draco could only assume was meant to control it.

(Why were muggles so obsessed with having so many buttons and things control their devices? Did they have no other way to do so?)

There were little pictures by each dial that Draco thought related to each of the rings. The number of rings and the number of dials matched up and it made sense to think that they were meant to go together.

Draco opened the packet of sausages, tipping them out into the pan. Putting the pan on one of the rings that seemed to fit it, Draco tried twisting the dial that seemed to correspond to it.

The only thing that happened was a light turned on at the bottom of the metal that covered all of this. Draco had no idea what the source of the light was.

And there was no sign of any heat. Draco held his palm over the ring, hoping to feel something. Maybe there was a tiny amount of heat? But surely it made sense to just immediately make it hot? Wasn’t that how magic cooking worked? (Draco realised he didn’t actually know – there had been so few times that he saw any cooking going on that he actually had no idea whether that was true or not.) But at least if he’d had his wand, he could have summoned fire, or some other kind of heat, and that could have cooked these sausages.

Draco sighed, resting his hands on the counter tops. What was he going to do now?

He spent a few minutes like that, just trying to think if there were any ways he could cook this sausage that didn’t require relying on muggle contraptions to do it.

And then – the sound of sizzling met Draco’s ears. He lifted his head. The sausages were making the sizzling sound. They were – were they cooking?

Draco held out his palm over the pan again. This time there was definite heat coming off of it, a sure sign that it was actually working. Okay. That was weird – why would it take so long to warm up? Why was that convenient for muggles? It didn’t make much sense.

But the sausages were cooking now. Draco could deal with that, if it meant that he got food. Working out the ‘how’s and well as the ‘why’s could wait for after Draco had eaten. And besides – arguably it wasn’t important so long as it all worked. So long as Draco could eat.

There were various other instruments that Draco could only assume were for cooking in a drawer next to all this. Draco nervously prodded at the sausages with one of them, and they rolled over in the pan. Draco knew very little about cooking, but he did know that meat had to be cooked all the way through in order to eat it. With no magic, Draco didn’t want to think what getting sick from your food would be like.

He didn’t know when they were ready, though.

It took Draco a lot of what he was graciously calling trial and error to get the sausages to what he thought was right. Were they safe to eat? maybe, and there was no way of finding out right now other than to eat them.

Pulling them out of the pan and onto a plate, Draco finally realised the hubris of his actions. There were so many – why was this going to be his only thing for dinner? Was this even a good idea?

But he was hungry. And the sausages smelled very good.

It was difficult to resist.

Some part of Draco stopped paying attention as he began to shovel them into his mouth. There was no part of his brain that wanted to acknowledge that he was doing this, nor why he was doing it.

And when he was done, he lay down on the sofa in the living room, and closed his eyes.

Draco woke up the next morning to light streaming in through the windows. The front window being as big as it was meant that there was certainly plenty of it – and it had done a very good job of waking him up, singing directly into his eyes and being generally very uncomfortable.

Initially he had no idea where he was. This wasn’t his bedroom at the manor, it wasn’t the Slytherin boys’ dorms, and it wasn’t the cell he had slept in at the ministry.

He blinked a few times, feeling blank.

And then he remembered. This was his house now. He lived here. He was in his own living room.

In fact – what was he doing in the living room? He had a bed upstairs, admittedly a rather uncomfortable one. There was no reason he shouldn’t have used it.

Then he remembered how sleepy he had been last night, the weird sort of coma that had come over him after he ate all those sausages. It had been like a fever dream, like the one time that he contracted dragon pox when he was a child and could barely remember what had happened during it.

It was something which made Draco slightly uncomfortable. How was he to live a good life here if he struggled to remember the actions he took? (Was this some strange muggle phenomena? Was this something he would need to watch out for in the future?)

He could not afford to dwell on it, though. There were more pressing issues, which made it nearly impossible to ignore.

Standing up carefully, and ignoring the slightly greasy and uncomfortable way his clothes uncrumpled off of his body, Draco made his way out of the living room, and went upstairs.

Going straight for the bathroom, Draco found himself consoled by the familiarity of the bathrooms. Clearly the muggles had some things right, and that was having the same type of bathrooms that wizards did. Draco knew that there had to be some difference in how they operated, since there couldn’t be magic involved, but he didn’t know what that might be.

Having relieved himself, Draco turned to his other priorities. He hadn’t showered in several days – he hadn’t been allowed to shower much while at the ministry, and the last time had been two days before he came here.

His mother’s words came to mind. _You must always present yourself well, Draco. There is never any excuse for letting yourself go, even when you are by yourself._ They were words which Draco had done his best to live by for the past ten years, ever since his mother decided that he was too old to be dressing like he didn’t care.

He needed to shower. There was no question about it.

The only question that did remain: how to use it?

Stripping off, Draco stepped into the bathtub. He shivered a little, the air feeling a little colder now that he was naked. The warm water had better come soon.

He studied the box mounted on the wall in front of him. The major theme of the box seemed to be a red and blue one – and Draco knew enough to know that it must relate to temperature. There was a dial in the middle of it – and tentatively, he reached out and twisted it. Nothing happened.

Okay. Right. This was going to be like last night, wasn’t it? Just a lot of trial and error and trying every button until he hit on the right one to turn the water on.

Frenzied, and desperate to get clean, Draco pressed every button – and was then showered in freezing water. Gasping, he twisted the temperature dial until it was facing full red. Would that do the trick?

Scowling, he stepped back, and only left one hand under the water to feel the temperature. He was even colder than he was before, and if he had to have a cold shower right now… well, he would deal with it, but it would only be more of a sign of how low he had fallen that he didn’t even have any warm water.

Soon enough, the water warmed up. Not massively, but it was lukewarm enough that Draco was happy enough to get under it. For all that it was meant to be at the hottest it could go, Draco wasn’t very impressed.

(Already the idea that he was going to have to give up hot showers plagued him.)

Cleaning himself with the products that were already inside the tub, Draco was happy enough to report that it was satisfactory. It wasn’t his favourite scent, but it got him clean, and that was okay for now. When he went shopping, he’d be able to buy something… higher quality.

Feeling cleaner, Draco pressed the buttons until the water shut off. Stepping out of the tub (and trying not to slip), he picked up a towel that had been left at the side of it, and dried himself off.

Wrapping himself in the towel, he walked through to his… bedroom.

It looked just the same as it had done last night. Slightly dreary, entirely second hand, with the only good quality items being his own trunks of his things.

And he knew the only thing he could do here was to open them up, and get his clothes out as best as he could.

Usually the trunks would be protected with charms. But seeing as Draco had no way of undoing them himself, he could already feel that there was no magic on these. It was sad to feel, and he tried to pretend like he wasn’t bothered by it as he opened up the first one.

Inside, it was immediately obvious that there was an extension charm put on it. The amount of items that were stuffed inside – there was no way there was no charm on it to make it bigger.

Picking out the first ones he came across, he realised that they were cloaks. Smiling, he placed them to one side. It was nice for his mum to have packed them, but one of the strict lectures he had had about coming here was that he wasn’t to wear cloaks under any circumstances. From what Draco understood from seeing the mudbloods at Hogwarts, muggles chose not to wear cloaks any more. For what reason he couldn’t understand, but it had been made very clear that wearing a cloak in public would be treated by them much the same as if he had performed magic. And Draco was eager to not be sent to Azkaban, thank you very much.

Maybe he would wear them again someday, but today wasn’t it. Pulling out more clothes, he sorted through the jumpers. So many of them were ones he didn’t recognise – possibly new ones that his mum had bought. She was always so thoughtful like that.

Draco missed her.

Next came the trousers, and Draco had several options here. There were casual jeans, ones which he understood muggles were fond of wearing all the time, even in formal settings. But the idea of dressing down… well, it just wasn’t done. Why his mum had even packed them, he didn’t know. But underneath them were suit trousers, and they were acceptable. He could wear those and not feel like he was doing away with all of his upbringing.

But there was something missing here. He had pulled out most of what he had here, piled them on the floor next to him, and there was no sign of underwear. Draco could probably live without any, but it felt like an odd thing for his mum to leave out when she was packing. There was another place that the rest of his things could be, and he knew he had to check there.

Putting everything back inside the first trunk, Draco got things back to the tidy way they were before. Then he pulled the second trunk closer, and hoped that it would hold the things he needed.

Pulling open the second trunk, Draco was greeted by a pile of his underwear. He felt himself redden slightly, at the idea of a ministry member having to go through these and looking at his pants.

But at least it was there, and Draco pulled one out at random and closed the trunk again.

He began to pull the clothes on.

Then – like the world knew that he was doing so – there came a knocking at the front door, echoing throughout the house. Draco only had his trousers on.

Shit.

Beginning to panic, he pulled the jumper he had chosen over his head. He had no socks on yet – but there was no time for that.

Momentarily, he thought about taking the time to put them on. But when the knock came again, he realised that he fully did not have the time to worry about that, and he leapt out of his room.

It occurred to him as he ran down the stairs that he hadn’t ever planned on talking to any of his neighbours. None of the muggles could possibly be interesting enough or worthy to talk to. There was no way.

But his parents had made sure to enforce the importance of good manners here, too. And if there was one thing that Draco wanted, it was to not be the weird one in the neighbourhood. He had had enough of that kind of gossipy environment while he was at Hogwarts, he didn’t need to start it again here.

From the stairs, Draco could see the outline of a figure standing right outside the door. Whoever it was hadn’t gone away.

An anxiety that Draco hadn’t thought he would ever feel began to fill him. Why was he anxious at the prospect of talking to a muggle? It didn’t make any sense.

He stood on the bottom stair for a moment, questioning his every move.

But then he remembered that he had responsibilities. And he couldn’t stand the idea of being rude to anyone, even if that person was a muggle.

Gingerly, he reached out and opened the front door.

“Hi there!” An older woman stood in front of him, holding a clear container of some kind. (More plastic? Why were muggles like this?) “I saw that you moved in recently, and I just wanted to welcome you to the neighbourhood!”

Draco swallowed. She was a muggle – but she was nice. Maybe this was some sort of weird anomaly? “Hello,” he said stiffly. “It’s – it’s nice to meet you.” He practically had to choke the words out.

Rather than seeing this for what it was, and realising that Draco didn’t like talking to her, the woman seemed to soften, and she held out the container to him. “Here, I baked these the other day,” she said. “Are you living here alone? It must be hard for you, looking after a whole house at your age.”

Wasn’t that a rather personal question for her to be asking of a complete stranger? Draco didn’t know that he liked the idea of answering any of what she’d said. But then, if this was what muggles were like – and the mudbloods he knew certainly hadn’t made him think that any of them had any manners – then maybe he would simply have to get used to having his entire private life being dug into.

“Yes, I’m here alone,” Draco said, only willing to give up this much. It wouldn’t do to be telling lies right now about it – they’d see soon enough that he was the only one living here. He took the container, listening to it rattle a little. He couldn’t quite tell what was inside through the plastic, but hopefully it would actually be edible. “Thank you.”

“What’s your name?” The woman still seemed awfully cheery for someone who couldn’t read that Draco wanted to be left alone. He shuffled his feet, wishing that the awkwardness of this would leave him alone and he could just get back to wallowing. “Mine’s Alison.”

“Draco.” It was sort of nice to say his name, and revel in how much better it was than the muggle’s. He had already known that muggles had their own strange naming conventions – the mudbloods at Hogwarts had been rife with them – but it didn’t take much for Draco to remind himself how much better the pureblood names were

Alison’s face did a strange thing as she seemed to process Draco’s name. “That’s certainly an unusual name,” she said. “Draco. Well, it was very nice to meet you Draco.” She held a hand out, and Draco realised with horror that she expected him to shake it.

Realising that he had dug himself into too deep a hole, Draco knew that he would have no choice but to touch the muggle. It took all the upper class breeding in him to act like this didn’t pain him one bit, and he shook her hand with all the control he had.

But at least this was a parting thing – he didn’t have to worry about interacting with her any more than this. Her hand felt… well, normal, but Draco knew that didn’t mean anything. She was still a muggle, and if Draco had his wand he would have been cursing her with all his might.

Alison released his hand, and took one step away from the door. Draco immediately went to shut it.

“Wait – I forgot!”

Suppressing a groan, Draco opened the door back up. “Yes?” He said, through gritted teeth.

“At the weekend, there’s a party being held at Carol’s house. I’m sure she would love it if you came!” Alison looked so enthusiastic at the idea of inviting Draco to this.

Draco felt a little sick. The muggles wanted to socialise with him.

But he still couldn’t say no. Maybe a year ago he might have risked it, and impulsively given into the urge to tell the woman to fuck off, that he didn’t want to associate himself with muggles. But he didn’t have the mental energy to do that to any other person – and despite how annoying she was, Draco didn’t think that she was doing it to be cruel to him.

And so he said, “I’d love to come.” The words stung as they came out. He couldn’t take them back, though.

“Great!” Alison sounded genuinely happy at the idea of Draco joining them. Draco couldn’t possibly imagine why that was.

Alison walked away. Draco didn’t want to think about her for any longer than he had to. A muggle wasn’t worthy of his thoughts, not for any longer than she already had been part of them.

Quickly, Draco closed the door before she could turn back and say anything more to him. There was nothing he wanted less than to be harassed by middle aged muggles in his time here.

(Because who knew how long that would be? Draco didn’t want to spend years interacting with muggles.)

Now that he was alone again, Draco wasn’t sure what to do with himself. It wasn’t like he had any responsibilities, and he didn’t have anything to unpack. (Was part of him grateful for his visitor, because now he was up and awake and had been forced to get dressed? But he would never admit it, and it was probably just fake.)

But his stomach was rumbling, despite the dinner he had had before, and now he was beginning to dread what would be for breakfast. What did muggles eat?

Walking into the kitchen again with trepidation, Draco pulled open one of the other cupboards that he hadn’t had the time to properly explore the night before. Instead of there being cooking utensils, there were boxes and cans and packets of all kinds of foods. (Maybe if he had discovered this cupboard last night he wouldn’t have been reduced to eating the sausages. It was a thought that he didn’t want to poke too deeply into.)

Squinting at them, it didn’t take Draco very long to realise that he had no idea what any of these were. The cupboard must have been stocked by a mudblood, because Draco didn’t recognise any of the products in it. It was… surprisingly frustrating to look at.

Determined to get a handle on what was inside, Draco began to pull everything out, hoping that getting a better look at it might help him to understand it better, and maybe help him get inside the minds of the muggles. To let him fit in better.

He ended up with a mental list of:

  * a four pack of tuna (thank merlin, something he recognised)
  * a loaf of bread (which Draco knew he should eat soon, because he doubted there was a stasis charm on it)
  * a bottle of honey
  * several chocolate bars (what a win!)
  * a packet of hot chocolate
  * a bottle of maple syrup
  * one box of cornflakes (?)
  * one box of rice krispies (the sugar content alone made Draco’s teeth want to jump out his head)
  * A number of other items that Draco couldn’t begin to identify



It was a list which Draco internally despaired of. Cereal was something he was familiar with from Hogwarts – the mudbloods had eaten it liberally, while Draco preferred the more traditional full English. He would never have stooped so low as to eat the muggle food in full view of other purebloods… but maybe it was time to let himself do what he needed to in order to survive.

There was milk in the cold box. Draco had seen it yesterday – it was the thing traditionally eaten with the cereal, right?

He began to read the box, hoping that this mystery would be cleared up. Sure enough, it stated specifically that it was designed to be eaten with milk. (There was also a whole lot of numbers and information that Draco couldn’t make any sense of. Why did muggles do maths while they ate? That seemed awfully strange of them.)

The pictures on the box (which, being brightly coloured, Draco could only assume was aimed at children) showed the cereal in a bowl with milk.

So where were the bowls in this kitchen?

Another inconvenience, damnit. Draco growled to himself as he stood up and went on another hunt around the kitchen. His own house, and he didn’t know where anything was. what sort of life was that?

Eventually Draco found them in another cupboard he hadn’t looked in before. He went about making the cereal quickly – he didn’t want to think too hard about the fact that he was apparently going to be eating something that the muggles liked.

Choosing the cornflakes, mostly because he didn’t feel like he’d throw up from the sugar in the other one, Draco settled in to eat.

Things felt a lot less worrying than they had done last night. The frenzy that had existed while Draco ate the sausages, and had driven him to strange lengths, was completely gone. All that was left was the shame that came with being complacent with the muggles way of living.

Once he was done with eating, Draco… didn’t know what to do with himself. What did muggles do with themselves all day?

Determined to not find out, Draco went back to his trunks and took a look at what his mum had packed for him. As he thought, at the bottom of both of them were several books. Only a drop in the ocean compared to the library at the manor, but it would do to keep him occupied for a short while.

All of them were books of magic. Two of them were simply textbooks from his seventh year which he had never got around to reading, and the other four were other instructional books. They would be likely to keep him occupied for long enough, even though he couldn’t practice at all due to the lack of a wand.

Going back downstairs and bringing one book with him, Draco settled into the sofa he had slept on last night. It was slightly too comfortable, but he also didn’t fancy sitting at the dining room table to read. Draco needed some decadence in his life, and if a second hand sofa was going to be it then he would settle for it. The book needed reading.

This occupied the rest of Draco’s morning. It was difficult to actually focus on it, but Draco was certain that if he spent long enough trying to read it, he would eventually succeed.

When it began to feel like too much, when the words were dancing off the page, he stood up from the sofa he had been sat on, and he stretched his legs out. How was he so cramped from only a few hours sitting? He had practically been trained in it since birth.

But he was getting hungry, and there was no way of getting around that. He walked the short distance from the living room to the kitchen (maybe that was one advantage to living here, in this small house – that it would take almost no time at all to get to the food, whenever he wanted it).

And then he stopped dead in his tracks, realising that there was something major he had missed when he had looked around the house before.

It had taken this long for Draco to twig that he had a garden attached to the house. He stared at the door which was in the kitchen, which clearly led out to something behind the house. There was a window in the kitchen, and a window in the dining room, both of which looked out onto the space behind the house. Last night it had been dark outside, and he had not even thought to explore beyond the bounds of the house since he was more worried about food and worrying about how much he hated the place.

But now there was sunshine coming through – more than it felt was fair, considering how miserable Draco was – and Draco wanted to see what he was going to be working with in the garden.

Not sure what he was going to go in and face, Draco pulled the door open.

A lot of green. That was a good sign.

And then Draco’s gaze wandered up from the grass. There was a tall-ish brown fence enclosing the space – it was much smaller than the kinds of gardens that Draco was used to. Still, he stepped out into it happily enough. It seemed that nature was one of those rare things that was the same no matter if you were a muggle or a wizard.

It was clear that it had been several weeks since the grass had been cut – it was taller than the regulation grass at the manor had ever been, and it was raggedy in places. There were dandelions and buttercups growing all about the place, and all in all it looked very untidy.

Immediately Draco knew that this would be what would keep him entertained while he was here. Usually he would be hesitant to lower himself to tending his own garden – there was a reason why the manor employed ten gardeners alone – but there was no shame in elevating his house to the glory it should be in. it would be more shameful for him to leave the garden in its current state.

Draco wondered if there were any gardening tools in the house. He had never used any himself, of course, but he had seen the gardeners use them several times – how difficult could it be to copy whatever it was they did?

Stepping further into the grass, he looked around, just in case there were any tools left outside, or anything.

There was no sign of anything other than the few plants which dotted the perimeter of the garden – aside from the glimpse of metal down the side of the house. That was a potential hoard of tools, right?

The grass was tickling his ankle, and he was pretty sure there was a bug crawling up his leg.

Still – this was a workable template. He might not have the best of tools, but it was clear that some care had gone into making the grass fairly tidy, and… maintaining the fence? Were those things that muggles cared about?

Wondering what was wrong with him that he was seriously considering taking this as a hobby, Draco immediately went back inside. There was no telling what sorts of nonsense he might get up to if he indulged himself in this ridiculous notion of making the garden look nice himself. He must – there must be a way to get the ministry to do it for him. Surely they couldn’t expect him to care for a whole house and garden himself? That would be far too difficult.

Instead of going back to his book, he went back upstairs. There was bound to be something else he could do. There was bound to be more in the trunks to entertain him aside from the books.

But no matter how hard he looked through the trunks, he found nothing else of interest. There were only his clothes. Which, okay, he did need clothes. But it would have been nice to have something else to entertain himself with.

But maybe his mum had packed things and they’d been removed. Why they would have been when the books weren’t Draco didn’t know, but it was a possibility.

Okay. Maybe there was something else he could do.

Heading back downstairs, Draco set about making himself lunch. He wasn’t massively hungry, but it was something to do. And he had been hungry earlier, so that was the same thing, right?

This time, it was much easier to make his meal. He already knew there was bread, and a quick look in the cold box gave him some meats and some butter. It was all he needed to make a sandwich, and that was acceptable. It was clearly something that muggles knew about, and that was good.

Draco made his sandwich, as full of ham as he would make it if he was at home, and he enjoyed eating it greatly.

And then, like a fool, he looked out of the kitchen window at the garden.

It had only been an hour or so ago that Draco had been out there, sure that he wouldn’t want to get dirty and do any gardening.

But it looked so bare. So… unbearable. The more he looked at it, the more Draco wished that it looked better. The garden you had reflected on how much you were willing to do in order to keep it tidy. And since Draco didn’t have the means of getting anyone else to do it for him currently…

He was filled with the urge to do it himself. It was fine if nobody knew he was doing it, right? He could pretend that someone else did, if his mum came over.

Grabbing the sunhat which was sat on top of his trunk, he headed downstairs.

It didn’t take him very long to go round to check out what tools he was working with. And – there were a lot. Far more than he could name, or even get a good look at.

He picked up the one that was closest to him. a trowel, still with mud on. He considered it carefully. This would do for what he wanted to do, right?

Holding onto the trowel, Draco headed back through the house, this time to the front door, for something he had noticed when he moved in the other day. There were several plants in pots in the front. Draco had no idea who had put them there, but they were his now, and he thought they would do better in the ground in the back garden.

Picking up one in a small enough pot that he could carry it through the house, Draco moved – very carefully – out and to the garden, doing his best to avoid spilling soil in the house, and more importantly, trying to not drop the thing.

Holding the trowel firmly in his hand, Draco walked back into the garden. His hat was shading him from the sun, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and he had a potted plant ready to be planted. How hard could this be?

He knelt down at the edge of the garden, placing the pot to one side for now.

From this position he could see through the slats of his fence into his neighbour’s garden. It wasn’t the best of views – there were flowers which got in the way, and it didn’t seem overly well cared for to begin with – but it was interesting to see how the muggles chose to decorate their gardens. (It didn’t surprise Draco to see that the muggles were not good at gardening at all.)

These particular neighbours were yet a mystery to Draco. Not that he had had much contact with many of the muggles on this particular street, but he did think it was somewhat suspect that he hadn’t seen them at all in the few days that he’d been here.

Deciding to ignore it – he didn’t need validation from muggles, after all – he went back to digging. His hole was pretty neat, if he said so himself. A nice round circle, just deep enough for him to put his plant into. Not that Draco knew much about gardening, but he knew enough to know that plant go in ground, make it grow.

“Yes, whatever you want,” a voice said on the other side of the fence.

Draco looked up. He couldn’t see it very well, but he could see the figure of someone in the garden a little way away from him. they were wearing clothes that looked very distressed, and flapped around in the breeze like they were far too big for them. Is that what muggles wore these days? Draco pulled a face. What terrible taste this person had. He wouldn’t want to be caught dead with someone who dressed like that.

“And don’t forget, you can’t come back in until you finish watering _all_ of them! I’m going to come and make sure you do!” A shrill female voice seemed to shout after the first person. It was sort of reminiscent of some of Draco’s less savoury family members, and he shuddered.

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.” The person – the man’s – response was rote, like he had spent a lot of time saying it and was bored of it.

He walked slightly closer to where Draco was, clearly not having seen Draco there, and Draco tried to get a better look at him. Even with him being closer, however, the gap between the boards still wasn’t enough to give Draco a good view of him any better. All Draco got was the flashes of his clothes, tanned skin and dark hair.

Just like the woman had told him to do, the man began to water plants around the garden. It was sort of soothing to

Draco finished planting his plant, patting the earth down around it so that it was stable. That looked about right. And it was something that he’d seen the gardeners do, so it must be right.

The strange man was still there in the other garden when Draco stood up. It was much harder for Draco to see what was going on now, and he had to admit, he wasn’t all that interested. These muggles were uninteresting enough that he didn’t care to know any more about them. And there seemed to be nothing exceptional about these ones.

Draco had bigger things to think about right now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's up my dudes! apologies for taking so long with this chapter - hopefully there won't be such a long gap between this and the next chapter. enjoy!

The next day, a letter was posted through that strange slot in the front door. Draco had noticed it before, but had assumed that this was for the purposes of letting a breeze in the house, or some other strange muggle thing. It seemed quite odd to watch the paper be fed through it, falling gently to the floor afterwards.

Once it was clear that the muggle who had posted it was gone from the property, Draco went over to see what it could possibly be. It was one, single folded piece of paper, and since there was no name written on it Draco could only assume that it had been hand-delivered by the person who had sent it.

He unfolded it. It was a handwritten note, which read:

_Hello Draco,_

_I spoke to Alison from number 9 this morning, and she told me all about how she met you the other day! She said that you expressed interest in attending the party which I have organised for this coming Saturday, and I just wanted to extend the invitation properly myself. I wish I could invite you in person, but alas I will be far too busy party planning._

_No need to rsvp! If you want to come along, it starts at 6, and we will be providing food and drinks. I hope to see you there!_

_Best wishes,_

_Carol_

_P.S. Ours is number 5, I wasn’t sure if Alison mentioned it._

Shit.

He had completely forgotten about that invitation. About the muggles wanting him to come and spend time with them and pretend like he could actually stand being near them. Like he was actually a part of this community.

He read the letter over and over. Each time he read it, a little part of him died on the inside a little more. he couldn’t say no to it. He couldn’t, not when he had already said he would go.

And… if he didn’t know this had been written by a muggle, then maybe he would have though it charming.

But it had been, and its muggleness tainted every aspect of it, from the lack of owl post to the strange and flimsy stuff it was written on.

The part of him that despised muggles warred with the part of him which had been brought up to never turn down any invitation. Should he be unpolite, or should he shun the advances of the muggles?

Well, it wouldn’t matter for now. Draco couldn’t be sure of some of the things that the letter mentioned, but he knew what rsvp meant. If he didn’t have to reply at all, he would have until the party to make up his mind.

Putting the letter down on the living room table, where he was sure to remember it, Draco got on with his day.

To be honest, there wasn’t much to do. He hadn’t established any kind of routine yet, although he thought he probably should.

Sure enough, his day ended up being spent… slowly.

And so did the next day.

The day after that ended up being a little more interesting. But only a bit.

He had his breakfast, and spent the morning in contemplation about his magic. If he could find a way to channel some of his natural magic into a form that he could control, then he would have a chance of escaping this place, and getting back to where he belonged.

His experiments yielded no results yet, but he remained hopeful. He was a pureblood, after all – this was literally in his blood.

His lunch was as bland and boring as the breakfast had been, only sandwiches. For this one, though, he stood at the window and watched his garden. the plants he had put in there were looking good, even without any charms to encourage growth. Herbology had never been Draco’s strongest subject, but after years of being subjected to professor sprout’s awful lectures and even worse fashion sense, he thought he had retained at least a little of the information.

Then, when he felt satisfied with how full he was, he went outside.

From out here, it was even easier to see how well his little plants were doing. In the few days it had been since he planted them here, they had begun to flourish. Maybe it was just Draco’s imagination, but he thought that it looked very much like some of them were taller and brighter than they had been before. It made him feel very good about himself.

Maybe it was down to the natural magic in him. He knew that it was possible for plans to soak some of that up, even when they weren’t magical plants, and it helped them to stabilise… something inside of them. Draco hadn’t been paying attention when professor sprout talked about that.

He went round, and watered each of the plants in turn. It was too sunny outside for him to think that he could get away with just waiting for it to rain – the summers down here in the south were harsh, that much he knew from being at home.

The watering can he had was a smidge rusty, but that was okay. He had found it the day before in the shade of the shed, and had promptly chased out the spiders that had made it their home, before requisitioning it for his own use. The spiders would just have to find somewhere else to live. (The fact that only a few years before going near any spiders would have been enough to have him screaming made him laugh. He had been long since forced to get used to them.)

Watering the plants took only a few minutes, but Draco stayed out in the garden for a bit longer. It was so peaceful out here – only the sounds of birds, and the far-away conversations of people in their own gardens. It wasn’t the grounds from back home, but it was nice enough.

Once it began to feel like the sun was getting too much, and with no way to cast a sun-protection spell on his pale skin, Draco headed inside.

He spent the rest of the afternoon looking over the books he had brought with him. There were only a few that he truly treasured, and the rest were just ones that he had thought he might enjoy, pilfered from the library at home before the ministry turned up to confiscate everything his parents had ever owned.

Should he savour these books? Leave them until he was so thirsty for knowledge that he would go batty if he didn’t read about magic? Or should he read them now, while he still had the brain power to do so? No doubt staying so long in a muggle neighbourhood would be enough to remove his brain from his body entirely, and make him nothing more than a sad husk. No doubt that was what the ministry expected him to do.

But no. He wouldn’t give in.

He cracked the first one. The familiar smell of old parchment and dried ink hit him like a wave of home, and he couldn’t help but smile.

Brushing his hair out of his face, he began to read.

When reading slowly – intentionally so – he only read through a chapter or so before deciding to go ahead and make a start on dinner.

By the time he was done with that, and had found a way to while away his evening (the fact that he wasn’t sure what it was that he had actually _done_ all evening other than look at all the dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen and wonder how he was meant to clean them all wasn’t frightening at all), he was ready for bed.

He had used the actual bed in his actual bedroom the past few days. It wasn’t the most comfortable, nor was it the cleanest. But at least when he used it, he didn’t wake up feeling as in pain as he had done when he slept on the sofa.

Getting into his pyjamas after brushing his teeth (something that had taken him a while to figure out, when he’d gotten into the habit of just using cleaning charms for it in Hogwarts), he got into bed.

It didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

Or long to wake up again.

Draco woke to a familiar sound, that of the soft hooting of an owl mixed with the tapping on the glass which meant that he had mail.

For a moment, he thought he was back in his home. Back where he belonged, wrapped up in thousand count thread sheets, on a mattress made two hundred years ago and filled with ostrich feathers. He had received mail in this room thousands of times, and it was second nature for him to sit up, and –

Right. He wasn’t there, though.

The scratchiness of this bed, the lumpy mattress – they immediately reminded him that actually he was still in the muggle house, with things of terrible quality that none of his ancestors would have been caught dead in.

The owl tapped on the window again.

Thinking it must have been part of a dream that he couldn’t remember, Draco looked towards the window. He would see nothing, he told himself, he would simply have to go back to sleep.

There was an owl perched on the windowsill.

It held a letter in its beak.

Scrambling out from under the covers, Draco struggled with the window for a minute. How was he supposed to get this blasted thing open – he wrestled with the handle for a solid 30 seconds, before realising that there was a button he could press, and that he could then twist the handle and push.

And the owl gave him a disdainful look, as though it was judging him for his incompetence. Well, Mr owl, Draco thought, at least I have opposable thumbs.

If Draco had had any owl treats, he would have refused to give the owl any. As it was, he didn’t have any, so the owl would have to go without either way. He took the letter, and closed the window in the owl’s face. That would teach it.

The owl looked reproachfully at Draco. Draco closed the curtains.

The letter smelled of home, and Hogwarts, and everything he had missed in the short few days he had been here. It was like a symbol of everything he had missed in the past week, a talisman to be kept safe.

But he wasn’t supposed to be getting any letters at all. They had been very clear about it – he wasn’t allowed to have an owl at all, because the muggles would find it strange to see owls about so often. Which was ridiculous, as far as Draco was concerned. How else were you supposed to send your mail? No doubt the muggles had a far inferior system – they probably still used the pony express. Hah!

(Draco was well aware that even if he had an owl, there were very few people he would need to contact. And there were only a few of those people who would want to contact him.)

With hands that shook (from lack of sleep, of course), Draco opened the letter. It read:

_Dearest Draco,_

_I know we aren’t meant to contact you at all, but I didn’t think they could object to me doing this. After all, it isn’t like they’re tracing our mail, only the magic we do. So long as we’re careful, we should be able to contact each other as much as we want. Albert here will stay around for as long as you need until you write back to me. I need to know that you’re doing okay!_

_How are the muggles? I know they must be insufferable, and I don’t know how you have the strength to cope with having so many of them around you. I hope you don’t let any of them hurt you. I’m sure that they must be as uneducated as we were always told._

_I’ve not done very much since we last spoke. The ministry is keeping me occupied with my cleaning job, but I’m hoping that if I do well they might let me back to Hogwarts next year to finish off seventh year. Maybe by then they will have seen the error of their ways, and let you come join me there. I know it will be terrible to be in school with those so much younger than us, but if you were with me – well, if we were together, then maybe it would not be so bad._

_Write to me as soon as you can – I long to hear from you. I think it has been two full months since we last saw each other, and since your owl was killed I’ve missed you sending me post at all hours of the day. Keep it to the night time, though – there can be no suspicion in there being owls out at night time, of course._

_The best of wishes,_

_Pansy_

Draco could hardly believe his eyes. Pansy Parkinson, of all people. She, who had all but abandoned him after the war, and had claimed that Voldemort had put some dark spell on her to keep her in his thrall.

As if she had even been in the same vicinity as the dark lord.

He scanned over the letter again. He was fully awake now, and now that he was, he found himself full of questions.

Sure, during their school years he and pansy had spent a lot of time together. They had put on the act of being the perfect Slytherin couple, after all, and the whole school had thought them wonderful, to be envied. But in all the time they had spent together, Draco couldn’t recall them having many meaningful conversations. From time to time they might discuss what the dark lord was planning, or how much they all hated the Gryffindors, but it never went deeper than that. Pansy would always claim that their stories were too gory, and they should change the topic to whatever gossip she had for them this week. (Draco thought that he probably had a mental catalogue of every couple who had gotten together and broken up in the entire time they were at school. All of the information had been learned very unwillingly.)

So if they hadn’t been close – and Draco certainly hadn’t told her any of this – then how did she know all this? Who had told her? Why had she thought that she needed to contact him at all? The last he had heard, she had moved on from him to Blaize. And when she had, Draco had felt nothing.

But she was his only source of contact for the wizarding world. He thumbed the parchment. If he chose not to reply, he would be cutting himself off completely.

This was a lifeline. This was a way to stay connected to his heritage. It was a way to get back at the ministry, for thinking they could get the better of a Malfoy.

He wouldn’t be replying for Pansy’s sake. He would be replying for his own.

After all, any pureblood witch or wizard was ten times better than a muggle.

But it was late now, and despite his wakefulness, he needed to sleep. If he was to continue his routine of trying to live his best muggle life, he would need to be awake enough.

If he wasn’t up by a certain time, would his neighbours notice? His parents always had at home, and Hogwarts had provided its own schedule.

Maybe they would notice. Muggles were very sneaky, after all.

He fell asleep contemplating all of this.

When he woke up, he felt better rested than he had done in a while. Yawning, he stretched out, and winced only a little at the various aches and pains he had picked up in the last few days. He had become accustomed to being able to magic away any pain he had – or just pester Madam Pomfrey into curing his pains if he didn’t know the spells – and it had been a tough break to realise that he would simply have to wait for them all to go away.

If muggles had to deal with this every day, then no wonder all of them were constantly awful. Draco could practically feel himself turning into one of them already.

Then he noticed the letter on his floor. So it hadn’t been a dream, then. Pansy really had written to him, and she really had wanted for him to reply to her and… do something.

He had hoped that being able to sleep would make his mind up on the subject, would help him see what the best course of action was. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have worked. Now he had no more idea what he should do with it. Pansy had never been close to him. Did he even want to tell her all about what it was like to live in this hellhole?

She was a Slytherin. She might be looking for ammo to torture him, or ruin his reputation. It might all be a trick, so that she could tell everyone they knew just how terrible the life of the great Draco Malfoy was.

No. The risk was too great.

Picking up the letter, he threw it under his bed. He would deal with it later. Pansy would be lucky if she got a response at all, and if she did it would only have the bare bones of the details. Exposing your weaknesses was Slytherin no-no number one, and if this was a trick then he wasn’t going to fall for it.

Wondering what the time was, he pulled out his pocket watch. It was ornate, and wonderful, and had been a gift from his mother on his birthday. He hadn’t expected to even get one, and yet she had gone ahead and done it. It had been one wizarding thing that he had actually snuck out with him, and it had been entirely worth it. He wasn’t going to allow the ministry to take his prized possession and sell it, probably. No, this was staying safe with him. where it belonged.

It told him that the time was 10am.

Draco blinked. How long had it been since he had slept in that long? Every night here he had woken up at eight at least, his body clock still used to being forced to wake up that early.

Maybe this was a sign that he was beginning to heal from the past year.

He then spent a while trying to access his magic again. This time it felt like he was maybe actually getting there. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought at one point that there was a spark, some sort of movement there that felt a lot like magic.

It wasn’t the biggest win, but it was definitely something. And that had to be good enough for Draco.

By the time he had done that, and eaten his breakfast, Draco felt bored.

There was nothing to _do_ here. Why hadn’t the ministry allowed him to bring more of his things here? It just wasn’t fair that he was being expected to stay here without anything to do. Did they think that he was going to find some muggle hobbies or something?

Out of boredom for anything else to do, Draco ended up having another look around the house, trying to see if there was anything else he could do here.

There were two other bedrooms upstairs that Draco hadn’t been in before. The idea that maybe there was something inside them that he hadn’t discovered yet was fascinating, but was also slightly scary. What if there was something in there that he didn’t like?

There ended up not being very much to find – although there was a small cache of muggle books in one of the other bedrooms, and Draco had flicked through them for a laugh. Most of it involved a lot of things that Draco didn’t understand, and he only really gave them passing glances before putting them aside. For some reason they all seemed to be focussed on romance, something that Draco couldn’t understand. He hadn’t so much as touched any fictional books since he was a child. Why would adults be reading about fictional events? And why would they care about the romance between characters who didn’t even exist?

It was so weird, and Draco left the books in the other room where he had found them.

But overall there was very little that he didn’t already know about. The other rooms were very empty, and it made Draco sad to look at. It didn’t take long for him to leave them alone, and closing the doors felt good.

The next day he spent a while staring out the front window at the street beyond his house. He hadn’t ventured out there yet, and really he didn’t want to all that much. He hadn’t been there since he got apparated a few streets over earlier this week, and the concept frightened him a little. Sure, he was fine here, in his own house, where he could control everything and wish for magic all he wanted. But out there? Where magic was unacceptable, and there was to be not so much of a sniff of it otherwise the ministry would come breathe down his neck until he died.

No, it was clearly much better to keep to his house and his garden. He was safe there.

Of course, he would have to go out there on Saturday. It was slightly daunting to think about, and he wanted to think about it as little as possible.

Technically he could always go out there now. Make it less scary. It was bright – the sunlight was directly illuminating the houses on the other side of the street, and the road itself – and it was quiet too, very few cars (which, Draco still didn’t quite understand those things – he’d seen them around before, but they still made no sense. How did they operate without magic?), and Draco couldn’t ask for much more out of a day.

If he did that, though, he would be admitting that he was willing to be in the muggle world when he didn’t technically have to be. That would be giving up, and he didn’t want to have to do that unless he had no other option.

Closing the curtains, Draco turned away from the view of the muggle street. It would wait until Saturday.

And then suddenly it was Saturday. Draco didn’t know how that had happened so quickly, but it was the day of the party, and he wasn’t prepared at all.

There was a suit among the pile of clothes that had gone unnoticed until now. Draco put it on gratefully – but also wondering why his mother thought that he would need a fancy suit where he was going. What an odd choice.

It didn’t take him long to get ready. Getting ready for fancy parties was sort of Draco’s forte – you could argue it had been what he was brought up to do.

There was a mirror in one of the other bedrooms that was full length. Draco admired himself in it – the suit looked as good as the day he had bought it, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. He looked good.

But he couldn’t stay around looking at himself in the mirror all night. He picked up his keys, and set off for the house that he only sort of was sure he knew the location of.

Draco knocked on the door in front of him. It proclaimed it to be the right door, but Draco wasn’t sure he believed it. Had he come to the wrong house? He couldn’t remember whether the letter said this house or another, and it was too late for him to go check.

From inside, voices sounded. Draco shuffled his feet on the ground, trying not to scuff the shine of his shoes. He didn’t have access to polishing charms, and he didn’t know where to get them polished. If he messed them up now, he wouldn’t have the chance to make them good again for who knows how long.

Through the glass, figures wobbled. Then the door opened.

Two women stared at him. Then the one on the right smiled at him, recognition coming to her eyes. “You must be Draco!” She exclaimed, waving the drink she held in one hand. “Welcome!”

Draco forced a smile. “Thank you,” he said quietly. It wouldn’t do to accidentally make any of them think that he was happy to be here. If he did that, they might invite him to more of these things.

The woman on the other side smiled at him too. “Why don’t you come in?” She said, gesturing at the house behind her.

“Of course.” Draco carefully wiped his shoes on the mat in front of the door before stepping inside. The shoes had only been worn to cross the street, but one couldn’t be too careful in the crime of tracking mud into other people’s houses. It was the ultimate offence.

Draco might not be happy about being in a muggle’s house, but he could at least show them all that he had better manners than any of them.

Stepping into the house, Draco tries to look around as thoroughly as he can without making it clear that he’s snooping around to see how similar this house is to his own.

His conclusions are thus: this house has clearly been looked after much more over the years than his own had been. Where his carpets are worn and slightly dirty (and had been since the moment he moved in) these are soft and fluffy and cream – any dirt would have shown up immediately, if there was any.

Draco didn’t want to admit it, but it looked well cared for. The banisters framing the stairs were dark and polished, the lights sparkling off of them in ways that would have made Draco’s own mother proud.

In all, the house seemed almost immaculate. Draco wished there was some deficiency that he could see, something that he could use to condemn the muggles mentally to make himself feel better about being here. There were none, though. Had Draco not been aware that he was in a muggle’s house, he would have almost have felt at home. Except for the size of the place, of course. It might be cleaner, but the floor plan was the exact same; Draco felt almost at home here, knowing instinctively where they were headed.

The two women led him through into the kitchen. “Everyone’s going to be so excited to see you,” the first woman said, who had introduced herself as Carol when she closed the door. “You wouldn’t believe how much everyone has been talking about you.”

Before Draco had time to preen – he hadn’t expected such a lordly welcome, and he was beginning to feel more and more at home as time went on – the other woman (Pamela, she had told him with a strange glint in her eye) added, “we don’t get new people moving in very often at all. The last man who lived in your house… well, he was very weird, to say the least.”

Draco had no time to ask what that meant, or who the house’s previous occupant had been, they reached the kitchen.

Immediately, all eyes were on them. Being completely used to this, of course, Draco didn’t mind. Well – what he did mind was that they were all muggles. Had this been a wizarding event there would have been nothing wrong with any of this, and he would have allowed them all to drink their fill of him.

But they were muggles. And there was more pressure – he was representing all the wizards, even if none of the muggles knew about it. Straightening his spine even further, he tugged at the bottom of his suit jacket, trying to get its lines to sit just right. He once again found himself wishing for a good, simple set of dress robes, but they had been very clear on the things he was _not_ allowed to bring, and dress robes had been at the top of the list. He didn’t _mind_ wearing a suit (even he could admit that they made one’s figure look excellent), but that didn’t mean that they didn’t pale in comparison to the elegance of dress robes.

It didn’t take him long to notice that everyone in the kitchen was also a woman. This was the aspect which began to make him feel a little out of place – was he the only man invited? He wasn’t opposed to spending time with women, but the glasses of wine in their hands, and the clearly conspiratorial way they were grouped together, making it clear that they had been talking about something else before they walked in. Draco estimated there must be at least ten of them.

“It’s great to see you again!” Draco looked up to see the woman he had talked to earlier in the week, who had invited him to this party to begin with.

“You too,” he said, doing his best to keep to the politeness that he was brought up to have. “I hope I’m not too late?”

That seemed to break the tension. The women laughed, and cooed, and it made Draco feel good about himself.

The room did go right back to how it was before, but that was okay. That woman stood up, talked to her friends briefly, and walked over to Draco, bringing someone else with her. Draco stood there and waited to be talked to.

“Draco, this is Carol. She’s the host of this party,” the woman said, smiling.

Draco smiled too. “Nice to meet you,” he said. Weird – he knew this woman’s name now, and fully couldn’t remember the name of the woman who had spoken to him before.

Carol smiled too. “Can I get you anything?” She asked, gesturing at the table on the other side of the room. Draco hadn’t even noticed it before, but it was full of various bottles and platters of food. Draco didn’t recognise the labels, or the brand, but he didn’t need to in order to know that they held champagne and wine.

Excellent. “Sure,” Draco replied, following her through the room to the table.

It didn’t take long to get him sorted out, but by the time he turned back around the other woman had disappeared. So had some of the other women, and Draco could only assume that they had moved to another room.

That was okay – it only made it easier for him to hear himself think over the sound of other people’s voices. He leaned against the counter, and tried to make himself comfortable.

He shared a few more pleasantries with Carol, mostly surrounding the food as they ate some of it.

Then Carol asked a question which made things a lot more difficult.

“So what do you do, Draco?”

Draco stalled. He couldn’t mention Hogwarts. He couldn’t. Muggles didn’t’ know about Hogwarts – Draco might not know much about muggles, but he had known that much since he was a toddler.

“I’ve just finished with school,” he said carefully.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Carol said. She sipped her wine. “And what are you going to do now?”

Draco shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said, hoping that being vague would mean she wouldn’t push him any more.

“You must have an idea, though! Come on – what did you want to be when you were little?” Carol elbowed him with a little grin, like she thought she was wheedling an answer out of him.

Draco had to hold the sighs in. Memories of his childhood flooded his mind – back when he looked up to his father, and dreamed of doing nothing more than following in his footsteps. Running the estate, collecting rent, managing the farmers of their farmlands, and making his own contacts in the ministry. His father had seemed so cool back then.

“I wanted to be like my father,” he said thoughtlessly. A moment later he realised what he had said – surely this was the thing that was going to make her more curious? He watched her carefully, waiting for her to ask, and trying to think of what muggle jobs there were that he could possibly say his father did.

Carol smiled even wider. “Oh, that’s so sweet!” She patted his cheek.

Draco blinked. “Thank you?”

Then she walked away. Draco had no idea where that conversation was supposed to go. Maybe he would never find out.

Thankfully, there were several other women around who seemed just as desperate to get to know him as Carol had been.

“What are you planning to do now that you’re here?” One of them asked him.

Draco blanched. “I’m not sure,” he said carefully, trying not to go too into detail about anything. What jobs did muggles even have? He’d lie about it, make something up, but then that might run the risk of exposing him as someone who didn’t have a clue what options muggles even had.

(To the best of his knowledge he wouldn’t need to worry about getting a muggle job – he hadn’t really understood most of the conversation, but when the ministry sent him here it very much sounded like they were going to pay for everything for him, because of work laws? Draco wasn’t sure what laws there could be that would stop him from being able to work, but maybe it was for the best. Draco probably wouldn’t be very good at any muggle jobs, anyway.)

The women talked to him for a while. It was nice, as much as it could be, but he didn’t actually feel like he fitted in here. There was too much that he didn’t know, and too much they all knew between themselves.

“Would you rather be with the men, sweetheart?” Draco didn’t know this woman, but she sounded very kind.

Without thinking it though much, Draco nodded.

“Come with me,” she said, smiling like she thought she knew what Draco wanted. “They’re through in the den. I shouldn’t let them sit through here and watch the footie, but you know how they get when I don’t let them watch the game.”

Before Draco had time to backtrack, to realise that maybe this was a bad idea after all, she was opening the door. “I’ve got another one for you,” she announced to the room. As Draco watched, ten or so men turned around to look at them. There was one of those… those things that muggles spent so much of their time glued to on the other end of the room. Unlike the one in Draco’s house, it was glowing, and showing some sort of picture? Draco could only assume that it was like the moving pictures he was familiar with, because what else could it be? “He’s the new one, from across the street.”

She didn’t say anything more than that, and by the time Draco had collected himself, she had shut the door and was gone.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Draco said stiffly. Some of the men looked like they were dressed up for the occasion going on outside, but others really didn’t. Draco knew what casual muggle clothes looked like – he had spent enough time around mudbloods at school to know that – and everything that those men were wearing screamed a lack of effort.

One of the men grunted, and in unison they all turned back round to face the glowing box.

Awkwardly, Draco walked round and perched on the edge of one of the unoccupied chairs on the edge of the room.

Then Draco realised that none of the men were talking, and there was the sound of thousands of people cheering from the stadium shown on the box. There must be some way to get a lot of sound out of it, Draco mused, but how?

The men he was sat with all groaned in unison. It must have been the other team in the game who had… got a point? Draco didn’t know what ‘footie’ was, even after having to listen to the mudbloods talk about it sometimes.

“So – um, who’s playing?” Draco murmured to the man closest to him.

The man didn’t take his eyes off of the box. “It’s Tottenham v Newcastle,” he said. Then he shot Draco a funny sideways glance. “Who do you support?”

“Oh – um, Wasps?” Draco said. He enjoyed playing quidditch, but he wasn’t so hot on knowing any of the professional teams. The Wimborne Wasps was usually the go-to team he said he supported when he asked, and it usually made people happy enough. They were usually mid-league, so it wasn’t like they were the canons, or the harpies, or –

“What? No, not in rugby. In football.” The man scowled at him. “Answer the question properly.”

“In… rugby?” Draco said, voice faint.

The man shook his head, and turned his attention back to the box. “You ask a bloke if he supports the right team and he starts talking about rugby,” he muttered.

Draco had no idea what ‘Rugby’ was. Context said it must be another sport? But it was hard to tell.

Maybe team names weren’t universal across sports. That – that would make a lot of sense.

It was a good job that this ‘den’ was dark, because Draco could feel his cheeks heating up. This was the first time that he had really messed up with making the muggles believe that he was one of them, because it sounded very much like the questions the man had asked him were completely normal for… whatever context a muggle would have had.

Maybe he should look this stuff up. If he was going to live here for a while, he might need to know more about these mysterious sports.

Wait. No. he wasn’t meant to be getting interested in anything the muggles were doing. That was ridiculous. He couldn’t possibly do that.

Draco sat there for what he deemed a reasonable period of time. The game didn’t seem hard to follow. It was like a very dumbed down version of quidditch. There was only one ball – which was far too few, because otherwise what was everyone else on the field meant to do – and two goals, one at each end. The men ran up and down the field, and tried to kick the ball at each other. Or in the goal; Draco wasn’t entirely sure.

Sometimes when the ball went in the goal the men would cheer, and sometimes the men would groan. It felt a lot like being in the stands at the quidditch matches, and it made Draco feel nostalgic for playing. He wasn’t all that bothered about the aspect of watching the game, but playing? Now that was the thing that really felt special. There was no doubt about that.

These men seemed to enjoy just watching though. If anything, it looked like a lot of them were celebrating the goals more than the players were. What an odd concept.

For all the hopes he had had that he was going to enjoy himself here, he had been wrong. He tried his best to enjoy it, he really did, but… it just didn’t interest him. There needed to be at least three other balls, and more brooms in order for him to feel it was worth his time.

When there was a particularly exciting bit (which Draco only took the cues for when the men in the room began to lean forward and make excited sounds) Draco slipped out the back.

The kitchen seemed to hold the same people as before, when he poked his head in. So he decided to explore a little, to see where everyone else was.

When he peeked in to where he thought the living room would be, he found that he was right about this, that the room was full of more people. Maybe it wasn’t going to be the most interesting thing in the world, but it would be better than watching ‘footie’.

He walked inside fully. Immediately he was waved over by the woman he hadn’t known the name of earlier – and well, there was no need to not go over.

“Hey again,” he said to her, smiling and hoping that this was going to work out.

The other woman she had been talking to smiled and said, “Alison, I’ll talk to you later.”

Right! Alison, that had been her name.

“So how do you like the party?” Alison asked. “Have you eaten these? They’re very good.” She held out a plate she was holding.

“I have had one… but I’ll take another,” Draco smirked, picking one up. (He didn’t want to admit it, but they really were very good. He hadn’t thought that muggles were capable of making such good food.)

“Good good,” Alison said, seeming pleased that he wanted to eat them. “I hate to toot my own horn, but I’m the one that made these. Usually we all take part in making some of the food, and this one was my own offering.” Alison must have seen Draco’s expression, because then she added, “oh, don’t worry! You weren’t to know about it, not when we didn’t want to overwhelm you with instructions. If you want to bring some when we have the next party, feel free to do so, but you don’t have to.”

Draco let out a long breath. Making such a faux pas was unacceptable by the codes he had been brought up to live by, and even when forgiven by a host there was still a lot of guilt. He would have to bring a lot to the next one if he wanted to make up for all of this.

“Thank you,” he said. “Oh – and for the record, yes, I am enjoying the party. It’s very… interesting.”

“That’s good,” Alison exclaimed, “I knew I did the right thing by telling you to come.”

It would have been such a nice thing to say, if only Draco hadn’t been contractually obliged to dislike muggles and be unhappy about being here.

Sounds from the front of the house made Draco realise that there must be more people joining the party. Curious as to what these new people might be like, he turned to watch them arrive.

There were three people – an older couple, probably the same age as the rest of the guests here, and a young man, whom Draco would only assume was their son.

Neither of them looked pleasant.

The man had a permanent sneer on his face, even as he talked to the people around him. None of them seemed to notice. But it reminded Draco very much of his own father – of the way he thought himself mighty superior to everyone around him, even when talking to people who should have been his peers.

The woman wasn’t much better. In contrast to all the other women here (who Draco had been surprised to find pleasant to talk to, if a little giggly), she looked haughtily at everyone else, craning her long neck over their shoulders, even when talking to them. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she gave off the impression of being, and teetered on high heels which put her only an inch or so above the rest. She didn’t particularly remind him of his mother…. But there was something in her expression, something in the cruel set of her eyes, which reminded him of certain parts of his extended family. And he would rather avoid any association with them so far.

Their son seemed neutral, compared to his parents. He looked around the room with no expression, and Draco found himself hoping. If he was no longer the only young person in the room, maybe this could be an opportunity to make a friend?

Then Draco caught himself. Making friends with a muggle? He must be going mad.

He shook his head a little, reminding himself that it wouldn’t do to get too happy here. He had come only to avoid being impolite; there was no need to actually enjoy himself here. There were no friends to be made, no acquaintances to be found.

Still… he couldn’t resist finding out gossip.

“Who are they?” He asked, turning back to Alison.

Alison took on the expression of a schoolgirl eager to spill the tea. “That’s Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and their son Dudley,” she said, her voice quiet. “They have the house next to yours, actually. I’m not surprised you don’t know who they are – they don’t come out of it much. Vernon leaves very early for work, and Petunia tells everyone that she’s always very busy running their house.”

“Oh,” Draco said, wondering how that was so scandalous. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“I know,” Alison said, sounding a little like she hadn’t actually heard what Draco said. “Isn’t it awful? This is the first gathering they’ve come to this year. We only invite them because it would be rude not to.”

Draco wasn’t sure he believed that. the words Alison was saying didn’t match up with the way people were talking to them. If Draco hadn’t been told any of this, he would have believed that they were all the best of friends. There was no sign of any hostility in any of the people the Dursleys were talking to.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Draco said, running his fingers along the side of his glass. “Why do you dislike them?” He could see his own reasons for not wanting to go near them, but Alison had said nothing about any of that.

Alison bit her lip. “I’ve only lived on this street for about five years,” she said, dropping the volume even lower, and leaning in, “so I’ve only heard this from other people. But they say that their son – Dudley – he used to be a real thug. A bully, a vandal, all of that. Poor old Mrs Figg from the next street said that once he and his friends threw a brick through her front window. The police never did anything, and they say it’s because Vernon has a friend in the force.”

Oh. Draco glanced over at the Dursleys again. Vernon had disappeared, presumably to go watch the football with the other men, but Dudley was still stood next to his mum, politely nodding and answering questions. He was heavyset, sure, but he didn’t look like a thug. Not that Draco had any idea what a muggle would consider thug-like, but from what he had overheard at Hogwarts, a lot of it had to do with tattoos.

“That’s fascinating,” he murmured, wondering what it would be like to live next to these people. “And you still invite them to these things?”

Alison nodded. “It would be very rude not to,” she said.

Well, Draco could understand that position. He was about to reply – something about how he knew what it was like to be part of parties like this – when Alison spoke again.

“And there’s another thing, too,” she said, “there’s rumours – and I don’t know how true they are, mind – that there used to be another boy living there. Nobody quite knows what happened to him. There was talk a while ago of them sending him off to some boarding school for troubled boys, but nobody knows what came of that. All people have told me is that they haven’t seen this boy in literally years, and they have no idea if he’s still living with them or not.”

Draco blinked. “Wow,” he said. “And – how do people know about the existence of this other boy at all?”

“Because apparently he used to be around here a lot more,” Alison said, shaking her head. “Carol says that Mrs Figg says she used to babysit him, but Mrs Figg’s memory isn’t exactly known for being reliable, so nobody really knows whether he existed or not. And a lot of us are like me – we’ve moved here within the last few years, and what we have are rumours from the people who were around when it happened, and from the people who used to be here. It’s all very mysterious, isn’t it?”

Alison sounded slightly detached form the thing she was describing. Draco found himself re-evaluating his neighbours once again – this time because he thought that maybe they were abusers, or something else.

But wasn’t it more likely that there was going to be no boy to begin with? What were the chances that there was some – some hidden member of the household, who was like Cinderella and could only stay inside the house?

He shook his head. “Wow,” he said. “That’s some story.” He couldn’t say outright that he didn’t believe it. But it was very much implied.

“And that’s nothing on the way that Mrs Beech treats her niece,” Alison said, changing the topic at will. “You should have heard the way she was screaming at her the other day. It was downright embarrassing. If I ever…”

Draco began to tune out the conversation, realising that the interesting part had passed. Humming and nodding in the right places, Draco’s eyes wandered around the room as he wondered how much longer he should stay here.

Absently, he pulled out his watch to look at the time. The stars pointed to it being about half nine – a full hour before he could justify saying that he needed to go to bed.

“That’s an interesting watch.” Alison’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Where on earth did you get that?”

Draco looked up. And back down at the watch. And across the room at where the muggle’s clock was.

Shit.

How had he –

 _Shit_.

“Oh – it’s just for pretend,” Draco laughed nervously. He stuffed it back in his pocket. “I just like to look at it sometimes.”

“It’s very interesting,” Alison remarked, drinking more of her wine. “You should let my husband take a look at it sometime. He’s a watchmaker, you know, I’m sure he’d be happy to look at it for you.”

“Thank you,” Draco said, strained. “That’s very kind of you.”

How had the ministry forgotten to tell him that muggles had different clocks? He had known it, in the back of his mind, but it hadn’t occurred to him at all when he had packed it. And there was only one clock in his house, and he avoided it whenever possible. How had he been expected to know that the muggles would think his watch strange?

And why hadn’t the ministry told him to leave it behind? That was an odd oversight on their part.

Making sure to avoid saying yes, Draco made a vague affirmative noise. That would be good enough for now, right?

Now that Draco wasn’t up for talking about the unusual objects that he had, Alison seemed to lose some interest. With a pat on the shoulder, she moved away to talk to her other friends, and that was okay with Draco.

Figuring that blending into the shadows might be the best cause of action right now, Draco slunk to the side of the room. Nobody else seemed to notice him, and Draco felt weird about the fact that his newly-learned skills in sneaking around were coming into use.

“Yes, we’re so proud of you, aren’t we Diddykins?” Petunia Dursley’s voice stood out to Draco over the noise of everyone else talking.

Sipping at his wine, and trying to appear uninterested, Draco listened in.

Dudley made an affirmative sound. Whoever they were talking to – a woman Draco didn’t know – laughed, high and brittle. “That’s so wonderful,” she said. “Where did you say he applied to?”

There was a short pause. “Well,” Mrs Dursley said, “obviously we applied to Oxbridge. But they didn’t want him – he’s too clever for them by half, I dare say. So we thought, well, may as well apply for some which are more likely to be up to his standards. So we applied for the University of East Anglia, and Sheffield Hallam, and the University of Hertfordshire. And you’re quite happy with those, aren’t you Diddy?”

“Yes.” Dudley Dursley’s voice was monotonous. Draco had no idea whether he was truly happy about this turn of events – so he sneaked a look.

Nope. The expression didn’t give anything away either. He was as neutral as he had been earlier… although maybe Draco detected a little embarrassment?

“Yes, I’m sure diddy will do excellently at university. I have every expectation that each university will make him an offer. Just look at him, how could they say no?” Mrs Dursley cooed, and pinched Dudley’s cheeks. Draco winced in sympathy.

Then he looked away, so as to make it clear that he wasn’t listening in on the conversation.

The woman Draco didn’t know began to talk about things he didn’t quite understand – something about ucas, and about the application process, and about the university she went to.

Draco only sort of understood what university was, anyway. It was something that the mudbloods talked about sometimes, but it was always in the context of their muggle siblings, and it had never been clear what the purpose of this was. Were muggle schools not up to the task of teaching their pupils well enough? If university was meant to be another level of schooling, why could they not teach them enough while they were at school? It made no sense.

It didn’t even look like ‘Diddykins’ was looking forward to it.

So Draco simply chose to walk away. He had hoped that listening in on their conversation might illuminate their characters, or at least be interesting to listen to, but it wasn’t. Petunia Dursley was too shrill, and Dudley Dursley was less interesting than a sack of potatoes.

There was little else to do, though. He had talked to everyone that he had come here to talk to, and all of them were currently talking to other people. Was there any need for him to stay?

He circled the house a few more times, and eventually decided that yes, he should leave now. It was late enough that he felt he could justify leaving by now. After stopping by to tell Carol and Alison that he was leaving, he headed back over the street to his own house.

Draco stumbled into his home. It was dark, and quiet, and a little cold. The heat of the day earlier had gone, and now it was replaced by the chill of the night.

If only Draco knew how to warm this place up.

Walking inside, trying not to let himself be too affected by the wine he had had earlier, he went into the living room. The folder on the floor caught his eye. It had sat there for days, and Draco had been avoiding thinking about it this entire time.

And he was going to ignore it for longer. Sure, he was sort of cold, but he wasn’t going to need to stoop down to the muggle level to work it out. He didn’t need to go that low.

(Did muggles just stay cold in the winter? Was that what they did? Truly, Draco had no idea how anyone was supposed to survive without warming charms built into the fabric of the building.)

Sighing, he went upstairs. There were blankets there, at least. And if there were blankets, he could huddle under them until he became warm again, and could get to sleep.

Opening up his door, he didn’t even bother to turn the light on. It was dark, and it may as well stay that way.

Picking up one of the blankets on the bed, he was gratified that it was one that was his. That would make it superior to all of the muggle ones that had been provided with this terrible house. He wrapped himself up in it, and stood by the window for a minute, just looking at the stars.

It was funny, he thought, that the stars were one of the only constants there were between his world and the muggle world. They were the same, and would be for a very long time.

If only he knew how to use the stars to tell the future. Then maybe he could have read them now, and know what was in store for him. or – was it the stars that told _your_ future, or did they just tell the future in general? Draco had never paid attention to that old bat Trelawney. Ridiculous that the class even existed.

A flicker of movement below caught his eye.

From his vantage point Draco was able to see not only his own garden, but the gardens of his immediate neighbours. The one to the right was wild, overgrown. It very clearly hadnt been taken care of in a very long time. Draco preened a little, looking at the difference between his own well-manicured lawn. Sure, he had only been here for a few days, and the lawn wasn’t something that he had actually contributed to, but he could still be proud of it.

The garden to the left was the one that Draco had seen movement in. Just looking at it, Draco was already jealous. There were rows and rows of beautiful flowers, and a greenhouse in the corner right at the back. A small bush sat in the middle of the garden, its flowers seemingly white in the dark of night.

And there, by the bush, there was a figure. A bench stood next to the bush, and the figure was sat on it, a small glow next to them indicating they had some sort of light source.

Draco frowned. Hadn’t the Dursleys still been at the party when he left? Maybe he was misremembering it, but unless they had left directly after himself, and run all the way home, there was no way any of them could have been in their own garden right now.

So then who was it? Who would be sat in their garden in the dark, in the middle of the night? It made no sense, and Draco began to worry. Had someone broken in? It would be strange, but not impossible, and if they could get into the Dursley’s garden they could get into his…

But it didn’t look like the person was doing anything nefarious. Draco shrugged, and figured it was none of his business. Whoever it was had nothing to do with him, and likely it wouldn’t come round to affect him.

As he watched, the figure and its light moved, heading into the house. Whoever it was, they clearly had their own plan in mind. That was good enough for Draco – mystery solved, problem over.

Turning away from the window, Draco noticed the letter poking out from under his bed. It was stark white in the dark, standing out from the floor and calling Draco’s attention to it.

He bit his lip. It was tempting. It was very temping.

After spending a whole evening surrounded by muggles, it had Draco longing to be a part of the world that he had grown up in. sure, he could spend time around muggles, but there was nothing like talking to wizards. Being left in the dark for hours was enough to slowly drive him mad.

Then he nearly tripped over his own feet, and ended up lying back on his bed. Maybe it was the universe telling him to leave the letter alone.

He sighed. Maybe the universe was right. The letter wasn’t the best way to get back into the wizarding world – and Pansy wasn’t the best person to talk to.

He fell asleep before he could even register that choice.


End file.
